In past and present systems, wire and/or fiber management and handling is a major customer concern. Products that require multiple different personnel for installing, servicing, and maintaining electronics with large amounts of wire or fiber handling requires some method of managing that wire. Without a sufficient wire management device, after time, these electronic systems become a tangled mass of wires or fibers that are difficult to trace and maintain. This increases the cost to the customer due to long service and maintenance times with a greatly increased probability of error.
One example of this problem is in systems that use large bundled cables that include a large number of wires or fibers within each cable, such as in telephone network systems. A cable having dozens of telephone wire pairs may travel into a junction zone, but only one or two of the wire pairs needs to be split off at that junction. The remaining pairs within the cable remains unbroken and travel through the junction. At that junction point, a portion of the outer cover of the cable is stripped away to expose the wires within. The wires are then unbundled in some fashion to expose the desired wires. These wires are then cut and pulled out, leaving exposed the remaining unbundled wires within the cable. Over time, these exposed wires can become tangled so that further attempts to reach a desired wire will become difficult.
Another similar example of this problem occurs with fiber-optic systems. As is known, multiple fibers are bundled into cables. At any particular junction point, perhaps only one fiber will need to be split off for connection to network equipment, such as WDM(s), splitters, and/or splices. As with wire cable, it is necessary to remove the outer insulation from the cable to expose a portion of the fiber-optics in order to gain access to the single desired fiber. In typical installations, the fiber-optic cable is wrapped once around two drums that are spaced apart with the exposed portions of the fibers extending between the drums. After the desired fiber has been cut and attached to the desired junction equipment, the remaining fibers are left to span the distance between the drums, but remain exposed. These exposed fibers are not held particularly taught, so that again, over time there is a likelihood that these fibers will become tangled either with themselves or fibers from an adjacent cable, making all future maintenance much more difficult.
Previous methods for managing wire and cable consist of using various cable clips, wire ties, and the like. However, these devices merely catch a single wire, group of wires, or cable at a single point. Thus, they do not capture the wire and hold it in any way that significantly avoids tangling. Further, the devices can actually aid in tangling of the wires by having them exposed to being twisted, crimped, nick, cut and the like.